


A Brief Glimpse of the Future

by LadyPaigeC



Series: Tumblr Prompts [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: During Episode: s01e01 Rose, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Light Angst, Post-Episode: s04e06 The Doctor's Daughter, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 20:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12066537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPaigeC/pseuds/LadyPaigeC
Summary: The Doctor is trying to forget a certain blonde who turned down his offer to travel. Will the shocking glimpse he gets of his future convince him to go back and ask her again?





	A Brief Glimpse of the Future

The Doctor trudged out of the TARDIS, pulled his collar up, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Head down, he made his way toward the Estriellian marketplace. He was trying his hardest to forget about the blonde girl that had turned down his offer to travel earlier.  _Don’t need anyone me, ‘specially not some stupid little ape who can’t even see what an idiot her boyfriend is. Better off alone. M’ life’s dangerous. Don’t have time to be worryin’ about anyone else anyway._ **  
**

He reached a stall that had potentially useful looking parts. The scowl on his face kept everyone away, even the proprietor, while he browsed. He had just picked up a Trax’il'er stabilizing coil, when he was hit by wave of lust and a blurry vision of a woman performing a very explicit act on his person. His knees wobbled and he dropped the part to grab the table for support. He heard the purr of a woman’s voice in his head. { _You’re back early. Couldn’t stay away?_ } He looked around in a panic. His mental shields weren’t where they should have been since the end of the Time War. Obviously, a telepath was taking advantage and amusing herself with him. He heard a giggle ring through his mind and felt a rush of anger.  _Oh, no she doesn’t. Ain’t gonna let anyone toy with me._

{ _Doctor? Is everything okay?_ }

His hearts skipped a beat. Hope spread briefly in his chest as he realized whoever it was knew him.  _Could someone else have…_  But then doubts started flooding his mind.  _No. I’d feel anyone else and I…whoever it is clearly entered my mind and found my name. An’ I’ll not let ‘em get away with that._

{ _Doctor, you’re scarin’ me. What’s wrong? Is Jenny okay?_ }

He stormed from the stall and looked around. All he saw was a sea of people shopping and bustling about. Nobody was paying him any attention.

He felt a faint trail of worry and followed it toward the large fountain in the town center. His eyes scanned the crowd. Each person his gaze fell upon was quickly sized up and discarded as the culprit. And then he saw them - an impossible blonde speaking with a red-head. He stood frozen as his jaw dropped and blood rushed past his ears.

Rose glanced up and spotted a face she never thought she’d ever see again in person.

“You!”

She slowly got to her feet.

Donna put her hand on Rose’s arm. “What is it? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She glanced at her distractedly before moving towards the Doctor.

“Who’s that then?”

“That’s the Doctor.”

“Another one? What’s it, like, the Martian version of John?”

Rose shook her head, eyes never leaving the Doctor. “No, I mean he’s the Doctor. Our Doctor.” She looked at Donna. “Remember how I told you he could change?”

Donna gasped and turned toward the unfamiliar version of her friend. “What happened, Doctor?” Donna glanced around. “Where’s Jenny? Did something happen to her?”

“Who’s Jenny? An’ who’re you?”

Rose ignored him as she reassured Donna. “He hasn’t regenerated. He’s…an earlier Doctor. He’s the Doctor I first met.”

Donna looked him up and down. “I swear, Blondie, your taste in aliens…”

Rose returned her attention back to the Doctor, and asked softly, “What’re you doing here?”

“Me? What am  _I_  doing here? What’re  _you_ doing here?”

Rose raised her eyebrow at his tone. “Had a little shopping to do, an’ this is one of my favorite markets.”

He glared at her. “Bit far from London wouldn’t you say? And a few millennia off. Who brought you here?”

“You did.”

“Impossible. I left you back on Earth with your idiot boyfriend.”

“Wh…what?”

“You turned me down not even an hour ago!” Rose covered her mouth in horror as understanding of when he was dawned.  “An’ now I find you at the first stop I make, half a galaxy away and 2400 years later.” He looked at her suspiciously. “What’re you playing at?”

Donna growled, “Oi, Spaceman. Is that how you talk to your wife?”

“Wife?” The blood drained from his face and he looked incredulously from Rose to Donna and back to Rose.

Donna rung her hands and cast an apologetic look at Rose. She mouthed, “Sorry.”

Rose stepped closer to the Doctor. She tentatively reached over their bond sending love and calm. { _Doctor…_ }

He shuddered at her gentle telepathy. “You…you’re the telepath from earlier?”

A fiery blush heated Rose’s cheeks. “Sorry, thought you were my…erm, the Doctor in my timeline. An’ I…if I had known…it’s just you both feel the same in my mind.”

“But…I don’t understand.”

“God, Doctor. I never imagined you didn’t come right back. You never said.”

“Huh?”

Rose smiled at the Doctor. “When you asked me to come with you.”

“But-”

“You forgot to tell me she travels in time. You were gone only a second before you rematerialized and asked me again.”

His expression hardened. “I never go back and ask a second time.”

Rose cupped the Doctor’s face. “You did for me…will for me. An’ for what it’s worth, I regretted saying ‘no’ immediately. I didn’t need to know she traveled in time, I just needed the wakeup of you disappearin’ on me.”

He closed his eyes against the bright love that shone from hers.

She moved her fingers to brush through the Doctor’s short cropped hair. “Made me realize I never wanted to be without you again.” He leaned into her soft caress and opened his eyes slowly.

His hearts pounded in his chest and he felt a sinking in his stomach. “Rose, you can’t…I’ve done-”

Rose silenced him with a soft, quick kiss. “I know what you’ve done. An’ I love you…love all that you are.”

He took a steadying breath. “But-”

“No. No, buts. I know it’s a lot to take in, an’ I know you think you don’t deserve…”

“I don’t.”

“It gets easier, Doctor. There’re people who want to help you, jus’ have to let ‘em in.”

He stepped back and crossed his arms. “An’ I suppose you’re one of ‘em?”

Rose nodded. “I’m not the only one though. You’ve touched so many lives…”

“Mum, look what we-” Jenny pulled to a stop when she noticed Rose and the young Doctor speaking. She tilted her head as she considered him. “Dad?”

The Doctor stuttered, “D…Dad?”

““Blimey, there’s the dad-shock again.” The older Doctor strolled up and frowned. He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Donna smirked and tilted her head toward his younger self. “Same man is right.”

Rose and the older Doctor both turned to their friend and admonished, “Donna!”

“Right, I’ll just be sitting on that bench over there while you deal with…” She gestured between Jenny, Rose, and the two Doctors. “…this.”

The younger Doctor was gawking at Jenny. “It’s…it’s not possible!”

Jenny asked, “What’s not?”

The younger Doctor looked from her to Rose. “She…she can’t be our daughter.” Rose pursed her lips. “You two are the same age!”

The older Doctor piped in, “Oh! Right. Progeneration machine. As you can see they, er, grow them very quickly on Messaline…She popped out this age. Really, she’s only 25 days old.”

Jenny huffed. “Dad, would you stop telling people that! I have all the knowledge of any other 19 year old.”

“But none of the experience. Ha, listen to me, I’m your old man and a genius.”

Rose noticed her first Doctor getting agitated, and she drew him away from her bickering family.

“Sorry, I know this must all be a bit overwhelming.” Rose took his hand and laced their fingers together.

He took a deep breath. “You look nearly the same age as when I left you.”

Rose smiled sadly. “I didn’t have as much time with you, this you, as I’d hoped.”

“Please tell me it was at least a good death? I didn’t…”

Rose laughed. “You didn’t trip over a brick or anything.”

His eyes widened. “Not the first time you’ve suggested that.” She smiled her special tongue touched grin for him. His eyes were drawn helplessly to her lips.

He cleared his throat. “Right…”

Rose squeezed his hand. “You died saving someone you loved.”

“You?”

Rose glanced at him through her lashes. “You think you might love me?”

The Doctor glowered at her, but she caught a slight twitching at the corners of his lips, and she smiled brightly.

“Blimey, Rose. Do I always look this daft when you’re flirting with me?”

She turned to her husband. “Hush you or it’ll be a while before you can find out again.”

She returned her attention to her first Doctor. “Yes. It was me. An’ I…I was so upset with you for changin’ when it happened that…I never did say ‘thank you.’”

“You don’t have to thank-” She pressed her finger to his lips.

“Please. Let me.” She took a deep breath and continued, “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for always takin’ care of me, thank you for showin’ me that there was a better way of livin’, an’ thank you for going back and asking again even though you normally don’t.”

He opened his mouth but no words came out.

“I love you. My Doctor. Always.” Rose stood on her toes and kissed him. This man who would one day be her husband and who in this body had kissed her only once. A kiss that had never been more than a hazy memory for her. She pulled away and licked her lips. Savoring the crisp new memory as much as his taste.

He suddenly grabbed her around the waist and kissed her hard. Tongue slipping past surprised lips. It was a kiss of fear and hope, of greeting and parting, of past and future. It was a kiss of love. When they broke away, Rose was breathing heavily. The Doctor rested his forehead against hers.

“Go find me, Doctor.”

The Doctor released Rose and stepped away from her. His hands twitched and he took a few more steps back so as to not immediately pull her back into his arms. He could do no more than nod his head in agreement.

The older Doctor sidled up to Rose and put his arm around her shoulder. He kissed her head and looked at his past self. “It does get better. I know you expected Gallifrey to die with you. But it lives on in the people we saved and our hearts and…” He glanced at Jenny. “…our daughter.”

The younger Doctor stood there overcome by emotion. “Right.” He steeled himself and turned.

Rose called out after him. “Doctor!”

He glanced back at her.

“I just wanted to say…you and I, we were fantastic.”

He grinned widely. “I can’t wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Nine Month and two of the prompts @doctorroseprompts on tumblr:  
> 1) The Ninth Doctor’s thoughts after Rose said no to travelling with him  
> 2) Nine runs into an older Rose who is already married to him in the future. How does he react?


End file.
